Information and communication technology (ICT) is central to reforming governance, innovating public services, and building inclusive information societies. Countries are learning to weave ICT into their strategies for transforming government as enterprises have learned to use ICT to innovate and transform their processes and competitive strategies. ICT-enabled transformation offers a new path to digital-era government that is responsive to the challenges of our time. It facilitates innovation, partnering, knowledge sharing, community organizing, local monitoring, accelerated learning, and participatory development. In Transforming Government and Building the Information Society, Nagy Hanna draws on multi-disciplinary research on ICT in the public sector, and on his rich experience of over 35 years at the World Bank and other aid agencies, to identify the key ingredients for the strategic integration of ICT into governance and poverty reduction strategies. The author showcases promising practices from around the world to outline the strategic options involved in using ICT to maximize developmental impact—transforming government institutions and public services, and empowering communities for inclusion and grassroots innovation. Despite the ICT promise, Hanna acknowledges that reforming governance and empowering poor communities are difficult long-term undertakings. Hanna moves beyond the imperatives and visions of e-transformation to strategic design and implementation options, and draws practical lessons for policymakers, reformers, innovators, community leaders, ICT specialists and development experts.

A case study of why and how national e-leadership institutions, e-government and e-society programs were designed and implemented. The book examines the process of building national ICT institutions, showing how to design and implement an integrated e-government program. The book describes how a fund was developed to promote grassroots innovations that leverage ICT to solve problems of rural development and poverty. The book proposes national e-strategies be grounded in an integrated framework and institutional mechanisms that would exploit synergies and interdependencies among the different e.

This book represents an important voice in the scientific discourse on what constitutes a sustainable information society, and provides a new comprehensive and forward-looking approach to such a development. This approach is based on the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by the main stakeholders of society, including individuals, enterprises, and public administration, who should use ICTs in order to build the welfare of present and future generations, ensure economic growth and socio-cultural development, increase participation in public life, permit personal development, and build the wisdom of society. As such, the book mainly focuses on the role ICTs play in transforming business, public administration and everyday life in the context of the sustainable information society. This volume will appeal to both researchers and practitioners, as it provides significant areas and directions for research on the sustainable information society, and suggests important issues for programming, building and adopting such a society. The book will allow the reader to answer such critical contemporary questions as ‘What is the sustainable information society and what role is played by ICTs in this society?’; ‘What are the challenges and tasks of people, enterprises, and public administration that lead towards the sustainable information society?’; ‘How can ICTs support people, enterprises, and public administration in programming, building and adopting such a society?’; ‘What are the factors affecting ICT adoption by people, enterprises, and public administration in this context?’; ‘What are the areas that should require a primary focus in order to achieve the most satisfying results of ICT adoption by people, enterprises, and public administration?’; and ‘How can ICT adoption by people, enterprises, and public administration be measured here?’

Nagy Hanna presents a systematic approach to integrate ICT into development policies and programs across sectors of economy and society. This book bridges the current disconnect between the ICT specialists and their development counterparts in various sectors so as to harness the ongoing ICT revolution to maximize development impact.